At age 12, Severn Suzuki traveled with the Environmental Children’s Organization (ECO) to the UN Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil – the very country that had inspired her activism on a trip to the Amazon some years prior. When one of the speakers at the summit dropped out, Severn realized she had the perfect opportunity to get the youth perspective on these issues out to the world. “We were watching as all of these old people were sitting around discussing the future; but we would be the ones to suffer the consequences of their decisions,” she says. “And who was speaking for us?” So, she stepped up, and showed great strength as she gave a powerful speech in front of many of the leading figures in the environmental movement. Years later, her speech became a viral internet sensation, called “The Girl Who Silenced the World For 5 Minutes.” It has reached more than 32 million people.